This blog will follow my Slimming World journey as I lose weight for my wedding. I hope to include my thoughts, feelings, progress and recipes.

Wednesday, 13 July 2011

Is It How You Say It?

Yesterday's post about my wedding dress countdown got me thinking about the different ways we think about our weight loss. In the post yesterday I mentioned I've lost 17lbs to date. I don't know why I wrote it just in pounds, when normally I would have said I've lost 1 stone 3lbs. The interesting thing was that after writing that post, I felt boosted by my weight loss to date. I kept thinking to myself "wow, 17lbs, that's brilliant Laura. Such a massive achievement" and was feeling very positive about how well I'd done.

Contrast that to my feelings previously about losing 1 stone 3lbs - I was obviously pleased with the weight loss, but a little voice in the back of my head was saying that I hadn't lost very much, and wasn't doing well enough (funnily enough, the same voice that convinces me to eat the bad things!). I'd felt my weight wasn't coming off quickly enough, and that I'd been stuck around the same figure for ages.

Yet both of these are opposing feelings about the same weight loss, which has made me consider whether how you say your weight loss makes the difference. In number terms, 17 is obviously bigger than 1.3, and I think this is what my brain has latched onto. It also feels I can take bigger leaps to the next milestone. In 3lbs I'll be in the 20s, and in 13lbs - less than a stone - I'll be in the 30s, and that really does sound amazingly impressive to me! So from now on I'm going to count my total weight loss in pounds only and try and keep that motivation and positivity high! (I'll still count down in stones though - then I want it to sound like a small goal!)